Jack Layton and Stephen Harper forge an apparent alliance

Did you ever notice at how apparently coordinated Mr. Harper and Mr. Layton's attacks were against the Mr. Martin during the last election, as if Mr. Layton and Mr. Harper with his backroom supporters had discussed their strategies in meetings? That is because Mr. Layton and Mr. Harper are apparently unofficially on the same Mr. Bush-led team, with Mr. Layton perhaps hoping for some kind of political self-advancement of some kind, like Mr. Mackay.

Mr. Mackay had sold-out the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada to Mr. Harper's Alliance Party ultra-right clique, and was eventually rewarded by becoming Deputy Prime Minister, in a Stephen Harper minority government.

A working alliance between Mr. Harper and Mr. Layton is the only thing that can explain why Mr. Layton has chosen not to apparently rally Canadians against the clearly reactionary agenda of Mr. Harper. Indeed, if Mr. Layton had logically chosen to galvanize Canadians against the clearly unpopular policies of Mr. Harper in Afghanistan, Lebanon, on Global Warming, AIDS, public healthcare, and on other issues, Conservative popularity would have sunk, arguably to less than 20% of the popular vote, and Mr. Harper's government would be on its way out. The Conservative government facing the prospects of an election triggered-off by a series of unpopular policies would likely fall. The current Conservative minority government would likely collapse, to-be-replaced by a Liberal-NDP minority, with Canadians rewarding an inspired NDP which showed leadership on behalf of Canadians by winning more seats. The reason this has not occurred, appears to be the result of the NDP elite selling-out of the progressive voices and traditions of the NDP.

James Laxer further reveals evidence of some kind of working alliance between Mr. Harper and Mr. Layton.

James Laxer, a professor at York University, who has been an outspoken traditional supporter of the NDP, and of socially progressive policies in general, indicated in an article published in the Walrus, that "On election night, January 23, 2006, New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton stood before a buoyant victory party crowd in downtown Toronto and announced that Canadians had voted for change and that more New Democrats in Parliament would mean better lives for working families and seniors."

Laxer further elaborated that "for Layton, winning twenty-nine seats and 17.5 percent of the popular vote represented an electoral triumph vindicating a very particular campaign strategy: an attack focused almost exclusively on the scandal-plagued Liberal government. With 460,000 new voters, ten more Members of Parliament than in 2004, better regional representation, and, judging by the jubilant crowd, momentum, Layton had every reason to be pleased. Indeed, not since the heady days of Ed Broadbent's leadership was the optimism so palpable. Laxer then indicated that "Just the same, in many respects it was what Layton did not say that evening that was more interesting. He did not mention that the most ideologically right-wing Prime Minister in Canadian history was about to be sworn into office; and he did not mention that while the NDP's 2006 election result was impressive, the party would no longer hold the effective balance of power in Parliament."

James Laxer then acknowledges that "Layton's speech capped a campaign in which he studiously avoided warning Canadians about any potential threat from Harper and the Conservatives. This odd fact had been driven home to me a few days earlier when a newspaper reporter phoned to do an interview. Clearly frustrated, he told me he had been on the NDP campaign plane for three weeks and that despite repeated efforts, he had been unable to induce Layton to say anything about Harper. The NDP leader was quick to attack Paul Martin and the Liberals, but all he would say about the front-running Conservatives was that they were "wrong on the issues."

It is clearly apparent Mr. Layton has forged, or has been "persuaded" to forge some kind of alliance with Mr. Harper. That circumstance can be revealed by examining the political behaviours of Mr. Layton, along with his largely token political rhetoric against Mr. Harper's government, that was not backed up by any public campaign in the spirit of the NDP, since the Fall 2006.

Indeed, shortly after the election, arguing that Canadians wanted parliament to function, and for the sniping to end, Laxer observed that "Layton said that he could and would work with Harper."

Laxer went on to indicate that "Following negotiations with the Liberals that seemed designed to fail, Layton broke with the Martin government in a letter to health minister Ujjal Dosanjh on November 7, 2005. He wrote that he was halting talks with the Liberals vis-à-vis stopping "the growing privatization of public health care in Canada" because "in our view, on this key test of whether the Government has a real desire to make the present Parliament work, we must regretfully conclude that there seems to be none." Three weeks later, the NDP joined with the other two opposition parties to defeat the minority Liberal government in a vote of non-confidence.

Inside the NDP, the move was divisive. By voting day, within the broader left community it had created a veritable chasm. The federal election "badly tested the relationship" between social movements and the NDP, wrote Canadian Auto Workers economist Jim Stanford in the Globe and Mail a few days after Harper's election victory. "NDP strategists precipitated the election, sensing a moment of opportunity to win more seats. But their decision was made over the explicit objection of many progressive movements. They had used the Liberals' fragile minority position to extract impressive, important gains (child care, new legal protections for workers, the aboriginal deal, and others); they wanted to solidify those victories, and win new ones." Leaders from these progressive constituencies "all wanted the election later, not sooner."

However, it became apparent that it was not Mr. Layton's intent to continue to win more important gains for the NDP from the fragile Martin Liberals. Somewhere along the way, it is apparent that Mr. Layton and other confederates among the NDP elites, sold out to financially powerful interests associated with the Harper's Conservative Party of Canada. The continued lack of criticism by Mr. Layton against the continued machinations of these financially powerful interests linked to pro-War, anti-social justice, and anti-environmental policies, that are revealed by Professor Laxer, appear to confirm a working alliance between Mr. Harper and Mr. Layton.

The defence of a socially progressive Canada, that had been inspired by Tommy Douglas, the first leader of the NDP, will rely on socially progressive Canadians rejecting Mr. Layton's apparent "Quisling" collaboration with Mr. Harper, and by forming a new truly progressive political party. Using similar techniques that are used to figure out accomplices and co-conspirators in crime, a working alliance between Mr. Harper and Mr. Layton is apparent.

Mr. Layton's leadership of the NDP, appears to be only designed to provide an illusion of a progressive opposition, that can fool progressive NDPers and other Canadians into thinking that they actually have a substantive political voice in Parliament. It is apparent that Jack Layton's NDP is in fact controlled by apparent collaborators who have sold the original Tommy Douglas-led and substantively progressive oriented NDP out, along with the defence of Canada's national identity as a socially progressive society.

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